The men who would play Richard Nixon

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

President Richard Nixon was in the White House from 1969 to 1974, when he became the first president to resign from office. He died at 81 in 1994. Here's a look at his life and legacy:

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Nixon was born in California on January 9, 1913. He is pictured at age 4.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

As a teenager, Nixon poses for a portrait with a violin in 1927.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Nixon, No. 12, and his football teammates at Whittier College pose for a picture in the 1930s. After graduating from Whittier, he attended law school at Duke University.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

During World War II, Nixon served as a lieutenant commander in the Navy.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Nixon, far right, stands next to John F. Kennedy and other freshmen members of Congress in 1947.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Republican presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower and his running mate, Richard Nixon, with their wives at the Republican National Convention in Chicago on July 12, 1952. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won the election that year.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Vice President Nixon, right, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, center, share a laugh during Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union in 1959. The two leaders engaged in an informal debate about the merits of capitalism versus communism at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Nixon poses for a portrait with his wife, Pat, and their daughters, Tricia and Julie, circa 1958.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Vice President Nixon and Sen. John F. Kennedy take part in a televised debate during their 1960 presidential campaign. Kennedy won the election that year.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Republican presidential candidate Nixon campaigns in New York in 1960.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Nixon addresses supporters after winning his party's nomination again in 1968. He went on to defeat the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

First lady Pat Nixon, center, watches as her husband is sworn in as the 37th president of the United States by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren on January 20, 1969.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin laugh with President Nixon aboard the USS Hornet on July 24, 1969. The president was on hand to greet the astronauts after their splashdown in the Pacific.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

In 1970, Nixon announces the invasion of Cambodia to the American public.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai toasts with Nixon during his trip to China in February 1972.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

President Nixon, left, briefs the Congressional leadership in 1973 before his televised announcement of the ceasefire in the Vietnam War. From left are Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House Carl Albert, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

In 1972, Nixon ran a successful re-election campaign. Gerald Ford, right, became his vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Surrounded by family members, Nixon delivers his resignation speech on August 9, 1974. He stepped down after the Watergate scandal, which stemmed from a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices during the 1972 campaign.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Nixon leaves the White House after his resignation over the Watergate scandal in 1974.

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Former President Nixon is wired for a microphone on April 9, 1988, before the taping of the NBC television show "Meet the Press." It was his first appearance on the show since 1968.

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Photos:Richard Nixon's life and career

Days after suffering a stroke, Nixon died in New York on April 22, 1994. A military honor guard carries Nixon's casket at the Stewart Air Force Base before the flight back to his hometown of Yorba Linda, California. His body was put on the same Boeing 707 that flew him home after his resignation.

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Story highlights

Richard M. Nixon has proved an attractive character for actors and comedians

Among those who have played him: Dan Aykroyd, Frank Langella and John Cusack

(CNN)Oh, Richard Nixon. Such a character you are.

Literally.

Perhaps no other modern president has been impersonated, parodied and portrayed so often, and why not? The brilliant and tragic Nixon was positively Shakespearean: jowly, with a swooping nose, guttural voice, unfortunate grin and overeager victory-sign pose, combined with the mind of a chess player and the eyes of an obsessive.

And that biography. You can't reckon with American history -- especially the history of the '70s -- without reckoning with Richard M. Nixon. He rose quickly -- vice president at age 39 -- crashed abruptly, came back to rise even higher and then went down in the ignominy of Watergate. (Historian Rick Perlstein even titled his chronicle of the '60s and early '70s "Nixonland.")

The material writes itself. No wonder so many performers have had Nixon to kick around. Here are some of the best who have taken their shot:

Dan Aykroyd as President Richard Nixon during 'The New Dick' skit on December 2, 1978

The sketch, based on the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein book, includes a segment in which Nixon talks to the paintings in the White House. "They're going to find out about you someday," he says to a picture of John F. Kennedy. "Having sex with women -- the president, within these very walls! That never happened when Dick Nixon was in the White House."

Aykroyd's manic bitterness captured Nixon's dangerous side and also showed that the early "SNL" would take no prisoners when it came to politics.

2. Philip Baker Hall

If Aykroyd's Nixon is played for some frightening laughs, then Hall's version, in Robert Altman's 1984 film "Secret Honor," is simply frightening.

The actor, perhaps better known for his roles in Paul Thomas Anderson films, doesn't look much like the president, but in this one-man show he plows a paranoid energy into the part, acting out a complex psychodrama and bizarre conspiracy theory.

3. Anthony Hopkins

Hopkins, who won an Oscar for playing serial killer Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs," took on the 37th president in Oliver Stone's 1995 film "Nixon."

Though he was criticized as over the top (Hopkins "brings plenty of Hannibal Lecter to Richard Nixon, a man who doesn't really need any more Hannibal Lecter brought to him," wrote Alex von Tunzelmann in a 2010 appraisal), he offers some sympathy for the beleaguered president in his portrayal.

4. Dan Hedaya

Hedaya played Nixon for laughs in the 1999 film "Dick," a loopy story about two teenage girls who stumble on Watergate and become Deep Throat. Hedaya looks something like the president, though he exaggerates Nixon's tics.

Of course, in a movie that features Harry Shearer as G. Gordon Liddy, Will Ferrell as Bob Woodward and Dave Foley as H.R. Haldeman, that's par for the course.

5. Harry Shearer

Speaking of Shearer, the longtime voice of "The Simpsons' " Mr. Burns has a longtime fascination with Nixon. His series "Nixon's the One" recently played on YouTube, and when "The Simpsons" needed a Nixon, Shearer's the one who's supplied the voice. (You may remember him from the "Simpsons" episode "Whacking Day.")

Shearer thinks of the president as a "self-made man, self-destroyed man," he told the Los Angeles Times. "I think of it as the darkest kind of comedy."

6. Billy West

"Futurama," which was co-created by "The Simpsons' " Matt Groening, also has a Nixon -- a head in a jar who became Earth's president in the year 3000. (His face is also on the $300 and $1000 bills.) In the future, he's a curmudgeonly tyrant, and Billy West, who supplies Nixon's voice, has given him a werewolf-like "a-roo!" That touch was inspired by the 1960 presidential debates, West told "Fresh Air."

"I said to my mom: Mom, it looks like he's going to turn into a werewolf, you know, because it was like (Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man) Larry Talbot turning into the werewolf, you know," he said. "That's what it looked like to me. So that's why I gave him that sort of thing."

7. Frank Langella

In the movie "Frost/Nixon," Langella emphasized Nixon's slick side, the elder statesman trying to recover his reputation. Langella's Nixon is smooth and clever -- but eventually offers a tight-lipped apology to the American people for Watergate.

Langella said the role, which garned him an Oscar nomination, was a big challenge.

"It took me a long time to figure out how to walk the line," he told The New York Times. "I didn't want to do an impression; I wanted an evocation of him, an essence. And I also knew that whatever I did, I could never satisfy some people, especially the ones who just want to hate Nixon."

He added, "But why shouldn't he be human? Why shouldn't he be sympathetic and touching, along with all the rest -- vicious, cruel, a liar and a crook?"

8. John Cusack

The 2013 film "Lee Daniels' The Butler" concerns the life of a White House butler (Forest Whitaker) over several decades of the 20th century. The portrayals of the various presidents are uneven, and Cusack's Nixon earned a range of reviews.

"Maybe I've just seen 'Say Anything...' too many times, but I couldn't think, for even a second, that Cusack's Nixon was the same guy who gave the Checkers speech or covered up Watergate," wrote New York magazine's Jen Chaney.